


Some Bloody Miracle

by linndechir



Category: The Hateful Eight (2015)
Genre: Deal with a Devil, Fix-It, M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-22 16:40:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12486124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/pseuds/linndechir
Summary: It's hard to sell one's soul to the Devil when he already has a claim on it. But fortunately souls aren't the only thing the Devil wants.





	Some Bloody Miracle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PositivelyVexed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PositivelyVexed/gifts).



It wasn't the first time Marquis had been injured, but it sure as hell was the worst. Bleeding out in a blood- and sweat-soaked bed surrounded by corpses that were starting to smell a little even in the cold, and his only company a Lost Causer with a shark's grin who couldn't shut his mouth even while they were both dying. Although even now Marquis was willing to concede that he'd misjudged Chris Mannix more than a little bit, for all the good it had done either of them. They were both dead, and while Mannix picking his side over Daisy Fucking Domergue was at least satisfying, it didn't give the bastard magic healing hands.

Marquis was in and out for he didn't know how long, and truth be told, at the time he was fairly sure he was hallucinating when he opened his eyes once again and realised they weren't alone anymore in the Haberdashery.

Mannix was – and that alone told him that something was wrong – standing a few feet away from the bed, still keeping his weight on his uninjured leg, but the last time Marquis had seen him, Mannix had been passed out on the floor, feverish and mumbling and looking like he was never going to stand again. Marquis couldn't see all that much of the other man – white, taller than Mannix, it seemed, in a grey coat not unlike the one Mannix had pilfered from the General, with dark hair that could have been brown or black. Something about him didn't seem quite right, but then it was a hallucination, so maybe that was just his brain clinging to the rational impossibility of Chris Mannix and some stranger having a nice little chat in the middle of Minnie's Haberdashery. Marquis couldn't make out what they were saying anyway – low voices, both with the same languid drawl, and they were way too far up North for yet another Southern bastard to get in the way of Marquis dying in peace and quiet.

He passed out again before he could start wondering whether hallucinations were a good or a bad sign. It wasn't until he woke up again – how much later he didn't know, but the storm wasn't screaming quite as loudly anymore outside – that he realised that maybe something _had_ happened, even if it was not something that made any kind of sense to him.

He woke up, still on the same bloody sheets, surrounded by the same bloody corpses, Daisy swaying on her rope like a girl at her first dance, and Mannix puttering about the cabin as if he'd never had a bullet slam through his thigh. And when Marquis realised that, half sitting up so he could see Mannix over by the stove, that was when he also realised that he wasn't in pain anymore. Which was in itself a really bad fucking sign, if not for the fact that he felt almost healthy. Clear-headed, the fever gone, the cold down to what was normal in a cabin in the middle of a winter storm. Tentatively he pressed his hand down on his thigh and felt no pain, nor any new blood seeping out. After a quick glance over at Mannix, who seemed to be doing his best to clean up a bit of the chaos, Marquis pushed the torn, blood-soaked fabric of his uniform aside to find nothing but unmarred skin. Smooth, healthy, not even scarred or scabbed over.

Marquis had never been a religious man. God had always seemed like nothing but a neat invention to keep slaves in line with the promise of a better life after death as long as they didn't ask for even a shred of dignity in life. If there was a God, he'd never shown any inclination to save men like Marquis from certain death. And Marquis sure as fuck didn't believe in miracles. There was too much blood around him to even consider that all of this had been nothing but a vivid nightmare, and for one of the first times in his life, Marquis found himself at a complete loss as to what had happened.

The only thing that pissed him off more was that Chris Mannix probably knew more about it than him.

By the time Mannix came over to the bed, Marquis had managed to sit up a properly and get about as comfortable as a man could be sitting in his own blood. Mannix was carrying two steaming cups, and he sure didn't look to be in any more pain than Marquis was. His hair stuck up in all directions and a sheen of sweat gleamed on his upper lip, but he still smiled that oversized smile of his when he sat himself down on the edge of the bed and handed one of the cups to Marquis. Coffee, hot and fresh and smelling like the best thing in the damn world. Marquis gave him a suspicious look.

“Oh, I ain't stupid, Major, I found a second pot somewhere,” Mannix said and curled both his hands around his own cup. “You think I survived all this to poison myself with that damn coffee after all?”

“Yeah, about that,” Marquis said. “Care to explain what the hell is going on?”

Mannix looked almost sheepish at that, like a boy caught at doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing.

“Considering that you didn't even believe me I was the new sheriff of Red Rock, I have a feeling you ain't gonna believe this either,” Mannix said, stalling.

“Considering that the last time I checked, we were both about as dead as Daisy and her friends, I'm willing to be open-minded.”

So Mannix told him – not God, but the other one; not a miracle, but a trade – and it sounded like the biggest horseshit Marquis had ever heard, but then he doubted that there was an explanation in the world that would have sounded like it made any damn sense.

“If I wasn't feeling better myself, I'd ask if you sold him my soul for your life,” he said with a grin when Mannix stopped. “That sounds like the proper Southern thing to do.”

Mannix looked so unspeakably offended that Marquis couldn't help but laugh, but then his expression turned more serious as he sipped his coffee. Marquis still hadn't decided if he liked that look on Mannix's face. It was so easy to dismiss him as a buffoon when he ran his mouth and smiled from one ear to the other, but he had more brains than Marquis had wanted to give him credit for, more guts, too, more steel. It didn't actually make Marquis like him any more. Men like Chris Mannix were dangerous enough when they were stupid.

“You know, I did think the Devil only dealt in souls,” Mannix said like a man who'd actually bothered to give that sort of thing any thought in his life, but then Marquis didn't know how much time had passed already since that conversation. Maybe he'd had time to think while Marquis was still passed out. “But you know what he said, Major? He said, people like you and me, he already owned us anyway, no deal necessary. Which I thought was a pretty damn unfair thing to say, if you ask me, because you are one evil bastard, Major, no offence, but while I may have done some things I ain't proud of, I ain't never done anything _that_ bad –“

“You might wanna stop right there if you don't want me to shoot you in the head this time, white boy,” Marquis said. He hadn't been awake enough yet for long enough to listen to this. Mannix gave him a long, calculating look.

“You ain't got a loaded gun, Major.”

“No, but at this point I can simply get up and find one.” He didn't think too hard about what Mannix had said, didn't know what to make of it anyway. He'd never bothered with useless musings about what happened after death, but if he had, well, he'd never given in to any illusions that he was a particularly good man who'd spend eternity in paradise, if there even was such a thing. “So if it's not your rotten soul he wanted, nor mine, what then?”

So Mannix told him, a bit haltingly like he expected Marquis to get up and get that gun after all. One twisted, shady deal if Marquis had ever heard of one – two lives for nothing in return but the obligation to stick together from now on, and as if Mannix had gotten to know him well enough over the past few days to read his mind, he quickly added that they weren't allowed to just shoot each other neither.

Marquis wondered what the hell the Devil – and it still didn't seem right to think of him as a person rather than a figure of speech – got out of this, but then he looked at Mannix's sly eyes and the grey coat he'd wrapped himself into like it was a mother's gentle embrace, and thought being stuck with him might well be a worse fate than death.

“Looks like the bastard has a sense of humour,” Marquis said and Mannix snorted into his coffee. “You know, I came around at some point, and I couldn't help but notice what he was wearing.”

The thoughtful look left Mannix's eyes, gave way to that overexcited, angry defensiveness that seemed to be his usual mood, like a not particularly bright puppy barking at anything that moved. 

“Well, now, I thought you might mention that and then get all smug about it and mount the highest horse you could find, so I asked him about that.” 

Marquis blinked. Trust Chris fucking Mannix to run his mouth even to the Devil himself, just so he could win an argument later. Not for the first time he wondered how nobody had shot Chris Mannix in the face before he'd even turned twenty.

“And he said he looked like whatever the people he talked to found trustworthy, so you can keep that moral superiority you were gearing up for right to your own damned self, Major,” Mannix finished, looking very pleased with himself as he took another sip of coffee. 

It was pretty good coffee, at least, Marquis thought, and he supposed Chris Mannix was at least marginally preferable to having one's balls shot off, now that Marquis actually knew what having his balls shot off felt like. If he was going to be stuck with the bastard, he might at least try to get what enjoyment he could out of it.

“Says a lot about you that your idea of trustworthy is someone looking like they've lost a war,” he said slowly, watching as Mannix screwed up his face like he'd bitten into a lemon. That, Marquis could maybe get used to.

* * * * *

Marquis counted the bodies strewn around the little valley, seven in total, just like the handbill had said. His pistols were as warm on his hips as the sun on his face, and he walked over to where Chris Mannix was standing, one foot casually resting on the back of the gang's leader, nimble fingers reloading his revolver. There wasn't a lot else Mannix was good at, but he was far from the worst person to have by your side in a fight.

It was summer, not the summer after that night at Minnie's, but the one after that. Mannix had left his coat with the horses when they'd sneaked up the last bit of the path on foot, and from behind he wasn't all that bad to look at. Slim, narrow figure, lean legs that trembled nicely when Marquis had him bend over, a tight little ass that did a damn good job keeping Marquis warm on colder nights. Not what Marquis had initially had in mind when he thought about making the best of the situation, but it hadn't taken him long to think of it and take what he wanted. Mannix hadn't complained all that much, or rather he'd complained a lot, but not like he actually meant it.

He stopped right behind Mannix, who put another round in the chamber of his revolver, then half turned his head to give Marquis that gleeful grin of his, eyes viper-green in the bright sunlight, and maybe those weren't too bad to look at either. Marquis put his hands on him, right there, out in the open because there was no one around for miles who wasn't dead, whom they hadn't shot dead themselves. One hand on Mannix's hip and the other on his crotch, and after more than eighteen months of working together, first because they'd had no choice and then eventually because it hadn't been so bad, Marquis wasn't surprised to find him hard – though he still hadn't quite figured out if it was the killing that got Mannix all worked up like a boy on his first visit to a whorehouse, or watching Marquis kill. Probably both. Marquis would have been the first to admit that he liked looking at Mannix best when he was killing white men, shooting them or stringing them up in a picture-perfect noose that no doubt would have made his daddy proud. Mannix could almost pass for pretty then.

He closed the chamber of his revolver just as Marquis tightened his grip, let his head loll back while he holstered the weapon and surveyed their day's handiwork. They still had to drag the corpses out of the sun and get them into town, but that could wait a few minutes. 

“You think this is how he figured things would go?” Marquis asked suddenly, not quite sure where the thought had come from. Neither of them liked speaking about the reason they'd walked out of Minnie's alive, except when Mannix felt the need to remind Marquis that he better not bash his head in no matter how much he wanted to. 

“Who, Bloody Jimmy here? I sure don't think he woke up this morning thinking he'd get shot by noon, but then the stupid bastard didn't know it was us gunning for him –” 

“Not him.” Marquis squeezed hard enough that Mannix gasped in pain, not that he got any less hard from it. “ _Him._ ”

He didn't say “the Devil” because that still sounded too much like something out of the stories Old Mary had told the kids on the plantation to scare them into behaving. Fortunately Mannix wasn't half as dense as he looked.

“Oh.” 

And that was all he said for a minute or so, leaning back with Marquis's hand on his cock – they both knew Marquis wouldn't deign to get him off like that, not when all he had to do was push Mannix to his knees and shove his cock down his throat and Mannix would do all the work himself because he got too fucking excited to be a little patient.

“He probably figured we'd make each other a lot more miserable,” Mannix said eventually, like he'd only then remembered to answer. He poked at the corpse in front of him with the tip of his boot – two bullet holes in his chest, one right next to the other. Neat work, if Marquis said so himself.

“Maybe,” Marquis conceded, though he'd long ago started to suspect that that had never been the reason at all. Mannix was too damn eager to please to be as much of a pain in the ass as he should have been, and whatever else he was, he was useful at least. Marquis glanced at the seven corpses strewn around them, riddled with bullet holes, the smell of blood putrid in the summer heat. “Or maybe he realised we'd make a whole lot of other people much more miserable than we would have on our own.”


End file.
